Best Keep Secrets of Austria - Spring Comes in Phases

"The little windflower, 

whose just opened eye is blue as the spring heaven it gazes at."

William C. Bryant

Antonio Vivaldi - "The Right of Spring - Allegro"

Growing up in Australia, the seasons we learnt about didn't quite apply as explained in the textbooks with the information borrowed from the English school system. Unless you were in Tasmania and the cooler areas of the country, the four seasons were not obvious. We kept the four seasons, in reverse from the Northern Hemisphere by date, despite the fact that the weather failed to shape up to the labels. Depending where you were in the Antipodes, there could be more than four seasons in a year and the variations in temperature could be subtle or extreme.

In Austria, the seasons are very much as I learnt, even though they don’t happen all at once, or by date, there are obviously four of them. In the “wild” and uncultivated areas, spring occurs slowly and in phases. There can also be a variance throughout the country, when it commences. It starts in the valleys and the sheltered places and slowly moves upwards, with the thaw, into the mountains. The cultivated gardens found in country and urban areas are different story of spring.

The Circus is Coming to Town!

  
Logo courtesy of Roncalli 

"The attraction of the virtuoso for the public
 is very like that of the circus for the crowd. 
There is always the hope that something dangerous will happen."

Claude Debussy 

Julius Fucik - "Entry Of The Gladiators"

I haven't been to the circus since I was a kid. I am not sure whether my Dad took me that last time. I know I was with him the first time I saw a circus. Dad always arranged tickets through one of the clubs he where he was a member. That last time he may have organised a group of tickets for friends with kids. My baby sister and I may have gone with them Most of the Dads would go the club and wait it out until the show was finished. Each year he would arrange for us to go to these summer events, while the clubs still offered them.

This was when we lived in Australia. In those days, it was a thrill for kids to go to the circus, as it was a rarity in the cities and the country. A once a year chance, for something “exotic” besides the shows, regattas and rodeos, to found annually in the country towns and the big city. The circuses generally had exotic animals that shouldn’t have been performing in captivity, kept in always sad and sometimes bad conditions. Reflecting on it now, I can only imagine the stress and sadness these animals must have endured, to delight and make us human kids, as well as the human adults, smile, laugh or gawk in awe, at their performances.

"The Gloves are off!" - Round #01: Abandoned

"You are hurt and worn out"

Ayumi Hamasaki 

Goyte and Fourth Floor Collapse - "Worn Out Blues"

"The Gloves are off!", at least in Gersthof, the area of Vienna where I live. Wandering from my apartment to the local transport junction, has taken an intriguing turn in the last few months. Major trackwork, on the tramlines, has been going on and will continue until the end of September.  I touched on the work in a previous essay, titled "Nuts in May".

The photographic opportunities afforded by this work to shoot some intriguing and offbeat photo studies has been overwhelming. I could be writing on a variety of topics and sharing the better photos for months on this trackwork. The photos above, of work gloves caught my attention on different days and in different places.

Worn-out and abandoned, the pair in the first photo, shot on a rainy day, were left laying on a section of bare tracks undergoing work. For more than a week, I passed this pair, unmoving and undisturbed, exactly how they were first shot. During this time, I contemplated a number of scenarios for their abandonment - the sad, the bad and the ugly. They finally disappeared when the area was cleaned, as the final work, for that section, went ahead and the plinths, between the sections of track, were put back into place.

Best Keep Secrets of Austria – The Secret of the Giant Leporidae

 
 
 
 
 

Albrecht Dürer's "Young Hare" 1503

Image: Wikipedia

"What beauty is, I know not, 
though it adheres to many things.."

Albrecht Dürer 

Simon & Garfunkel - Bright Eyes

I was wandering through Vienna during the middle of July, while heading towards the Burggarten on a photographic mission (more on that in a number of future blog essays). I decided to go along a side street of the State Opera House, when my eyes caught sight of something totally unexpected. Sitting on top of the most famous Bitzinger Würstelstand, located below the Albertina Museum and across from the Opera house was a supersized green bunny.

Austrians like to enjoy themselves with some rather strong or numerous enlightening liquids and some have been known to see some odd things. Being stone cold sober and spying this ginormous green bunny was a surprise, and delight, to me. I couldn’t help taking a few shots of the bunny sitting in all his elegance on top of this famous Würstelstand.

Best Kept Secrets of Austria - Summer Harvest Stalls

"One must ask children and birds 
how cherries and strawberries taste."

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 

The Beatles - Strawberry Fields Forever

Around about the beginning of May each year, on my way to and from work, or just into the city, I start to watch for my favourite summer season fruit, vegetables and berry stall. This is generally a large table located on the lower level of the Tram Junction at the U-Bahn station at Schottentor. I have been doing this since my first summer in Vienna, which was way back in 2006.

The first offerings of the season are generally strawberries, and strangely small bunches of Lily of the Valley. Maybe this has to do with the fact that here they are called Maiglöckchen (May Bells) and/or they are a nice Mother’s Day present. This year the Lily of the Valley was missing. They had sprouted and bloomed way back in March. The strawberries on the other hand have arrived just on schedule.

Nuts in May

"I'm tired of high policy talks. 

I want to focus on nuts and bolts."

Dave Freudenthal 

Edward Ka-Spel - Nuts in May

Well not the nuts of the old nursery rhyme, but rather nuts that go with bolts. Currently, Gersthof where I live, is going through a massive tram line maintenance process. Believe it or not, and this is not very girly, I am finding it fascinating. Whenever I pass the works with my camera, I take the time gathering some photographs.  

I have been experimenting with some rather arty shots, “gathering” these arty ones of nuts with their bolts. Not something that would be usually classed as beautiful, I found these ones strangely attractive in their collected form. All thrown together in a box, waiting to be used or recycled back into the track work, where they would then perform their designated function. 

Best Keep Secrets of Austria - Introducing artwalk18

"Without poets, without artists,

men would soon weary of nature's monotony."

Guillaume Apollinaire

Escape The Fate - Picture Perfect

A further tale of adventure from Austria, the land without the Kangaroos. I have recently been musing about why people choose to visit this small country. For this article, I decide to ask Google the simple little question “why do people visit Austria?” Interestingly auto select tried to convince me that I wanted Australia, the land with the Kangaroos, but I wasn't going to play that little Google game. I stumbled across 2 blog/webpages that both provided me with a list of ten and five reasons respectively:

a. The Shearing Blog:
1. Classical Music; 2. The Austrian Alps; 3. Architecture; 4. "The Sound of Music";  5.Food; 6. Drinks; 7. Weather; 8. Railways; 9. Dancing; 10. Yodelling

b.  Nomadical Sabbatical:
1. Yodelling; 2. Mountains; 3. Classical Music; 4.Architecture; 5.Food & Drink

Baby IT Was Cold Outside! The Eisheilige 2014

"It's too cold outside for angels to fly."

Ed Sheeran

Margaret Whiting & Johnny Mercer - Baby Its Cold Outside

Most years in May, with some exceptions, Austria along with most of Europe goes through an icy spell that throws us back into winter for a week. Those glorious spring days seem to take a break or disappear without so much as a protest to be replaced by rain, icy winds and extremely cold weather.  In the Alps, the days can sometimes herald the last of the winter snowfall for the year.  After that is generally becomes a downhill run into summer.  

The days are referred to at the Eisheilige (Ice Saints). The worst day is usually St. Sophia’s feast day and she is referred to as the Kalte Sophie (Cold Sophie). Despite global warming and indications of climate change during the seasons, these days religiously, (pardon the pun), arrive every year around the same time and have for centuries. Farmers generally hold off some of their labours, to ensure that any work in the fields is not wasted. The days generally are: 

St. Mamertus, Bishop of Vienna – 11. Mai

St. Pankratius, an early Christian Martyr – 12. Mai

St. Servatius, Bishop of Tongeren – 13. Mai 

St. Bonifatius, an early Christian Martyr – 14. Mai

St. Sophia, an early Christian Martyr – 15. Mai

"Puttin' on the Ritz" in Vienna - Street Art Stencils

Street Art - Stencils found in Gersthof - 2013

Fred Astaire - Puttin' On The Ritz

YouTube Source - fred l

A Paramount Pictures promotional photo-montage 

 "Puttin' on the Ritz" in ''Blue Skies'' (1946). 

Source: Wikipeadia

"I'm puttin'on my top hat Tyin'up my white tie Brushin'off my tails"

Irving Berlin

Fred Astaire - Top Hat, White Tie and Tails

I have become rather fascinated by the Street Art since living in Europe. In particular the form of Street Art delivered via the medium of stencils, some of which can be found in the area of Gersthof, located in Vienna, where I live. Every time I come across a stencil I haven’t seen or an improved image of one, (or a coal chutes for that matter), I just can’t help snapping them. 

Poor graffiti and Street Art does nothing for me, less than nothing when it defaces a building. Most of the stencil art in Vienna has been neatly applied to boring removable features of buildings, hydrants and telephone or electric junction boxes, that could do with a little uplift and can be easily cleaned. I do suspect the local council’s may not agree, but then again I haven’t witnessed a rush to clean any of them away, in this hyper maintained and very clean city.

Shoot the Chutes!

From Chute Collection  I

Chute Collection I

From Chute Collection II

"The artist in me cries out for design."

Robert Frost

Bob Dylan - In A Basement Black as Coal

After living in Vienna for almost 8 years, it still fascinates me that there are always reminders of just how different this city is from Sydney. Of course it is older, but the reminders are often the most simplest of things as they never existed, or at least not in the same form, Downunder. This was generally due to different living conditions, environment, culture or building codes.  Many times I have small moments of enlightenment or discovery that can lead me on the path to a small, or sometimes a big, adventure of discovery.

Recently, doing a welcome favour for my ex-flatmates, I wandered between my apartment and theirs, with my iPhone in hand and the necessary culinary items to make two feline “friends” extremely satisfied. The setting, for both apartments, is the area of Gersthof, which is located in the 18^th district of city. Gersthof has a colourful history, which is another story, and is an area where a large percentage of the dwellings and apartment blocks date back to the last quarter of the 19^th century. Lovely ornate buildings with relief decorations, tiling, mosaics, friezes, of ornamented doors, ironwork, dotted with statues here & there and mostly always painted in a variety of subtle aged building colours typical to Austrian towns and villages.